


Fearless

by Marsmiims



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Anger, Angst, Gen, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Suicidal Thoughts, ardyn reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9286214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsmiims/pseuds/Marsmiims
Summary: Adryn speaks to Regis before the throne and remembers his brother.





	

It is like looking at Izunia, an aged Izunia. ‘King’ Regis has the same dark hair, the same blue eyes and the same hungry hollows under the bones of his cheeks. Whoever it was that said ‘keep fat happy men around you’ certainly knew what they were talking about. 

Oh certainly the nose and chin are different, but really does it matter?

Regis could have looked like a gigantoad crossed with a behemoth, and Ardyn would not have cared less, it was who he came from and what it meant.

“Hello, hello there!”

After all, call a Lucis Caelum by any other name and it still smelled like betrayal, or so the phrase went- more or less.

The light shines down on the king from above, golden and dappled and for a moment- just a small one- Ardyn remembers the last time he saw his brother.

A silhouette through a sliver of light as they shut the doors on him, as they erased him from history. 

He had been tired, and angry and bitter and so so sad. That young man hadn’t known anything. An age in the dark would change that.

Oh, but his mind is wandering. Where is he?

Regis had said something hadn’t he?

“It is an honor to be recognized by the great King Regis. Yet, permit me to stand on ceremony and introduce myself non the less. Ardyn Izunia.”

Chancellor, King, man without fear.

Ardyn feels the left side of his mouth creep up- just a bit. He is so very close, and there isn’t anybody to stop him. In fact, he could laugh at them all, tell them all what he really wants, and nothing would change.

The hounds of war had been unleashed, the gates of the temple of Janus left open. The world was racing to its conclusion, to his conclusion. And to Ardyn’s credit, the foundations had been so well laid- nothing could stop him now.

Save for the death of the Prince, but that should be easy enough to prevent.

“Peace,” says the man in such a way as to imply- disbelief.

Smart one he is.

“As you no doubt surmised that recent maneuver of ours was no strategic retreat. Call it-“

Here he pauses for effect, what to say, what to say?

He puckers his lips, and takes one step up the throne, and then more, “A gesture of imperial good will.”

Bla.

Bla.

Bla.

What follows is a lesson in the jargon of real-politick- really, he should teach a class. There the young prince, soon to be king, here the oracle- his bride.

Ah, and here is Ardyn, the fallen, the corrupted. 

Ardyn occasionally wonders what his brother had been thinking when he locked him in that prison- in the dark. Hadn’t he wondered what would crawl out?

Ardyn had been so afraid at first, alone and chained to the ceiling. The pain had overwhelmed him. He had prayed for death, to starve, for dehydration, for asphyxiation, too whiter away with age! And all for nothing. 

The cuffs around his wrists had rotted away before he had. 

So he sat for an age in the dark thinking about what he had lost: his home, his kingdom- his- his loved ones. 

He sat there for so long he stopped feeling, stopped thinking and stopped fighting the thing inside him, that thing he had taken from countless others. He hadn’t stopped speaking though, never that.

And one day he spoke, and the darkness answered back, and the voice it used was his.

Then the door hinges on his prison rotted away, much like the cuffs around his wrists- and he stepped back into the dewy morning light, and back into memory.

Oh, his brother had not known what he would unleash.

After all, when you take away the fear, when you take away the love and you take away death, what is left?

**Author's Note:**

> Both the quote about keeping fat men around you, and the one about names smelling like betrayal (sweet) are abbreviated from Shakespeare. The first is from Julius Caesar, and the second is from Romeo and Juliet.
> 
> Janus was an old Roman god, they believed that his temple trapped war, and so they only opened his temple gates when the empire was at war.


End file.
